Villas and mansions
The late 19th- and early 20th-century private residences of the wealthy Chinese are among the most spectacular buildings in Malaysian cities. They are eye-catching for their sheer ostentation and for the ways in which they combined European classical forms and styles with traditional Chinese house plans and motifs. Results varied from the elegant to the whimsical. These architectural hybrids are also known as 'compradore mansions', for just as their capitalist towkay owners prospered as agents between foreign power and capital on the one hand, and small-time Chinese entrepreneurs on the other, so too did the monuments they built reflect their double allegiance to the East and the West.
- Information in the full article includes
- Mansions of the towkays
- Western décor, Eastern decorum
- Grand old mansions
